When to Hire a Content Marketing Agency

Marketing is a crucial component of any successful business, but it requires a lot of time and effort. From determining who your core audience is to putting together and carrying out online marketing campaigns, the entire process is time-consuming and involves lots of research and planning.

When you need help, turning to a marketing agency can be a perfect solution.

But, how do you know when it’s time to consider this option instead of focusing on building an in-house marketing team? Taking the following factors into consideration can help you make this decision.

Startups

When you’re just starting out with your business, keeping costs down as much as possible while building a client base is a must. It's at the core of survival. You might not have the budget to hire an outside marketing agency until your company is on solid ground with a considerable stable list of clients.

Startups also deal with growing pains, and it’s not unusual to find that your company has to make changes often, and suddenly, that affect the direction of your marketing efforts. This can make it tough to coordinate with an outside agency when it comes to your social media or online content marketing campaigns.

In general, startups tend to go with an in-house marketing team to control costs more efficiently and be able to make changes with as little pain as possible. Just remember, though, that you always have the option to turn to an outside marketing agency down the line when your business is fully up and running.

Established Businesses

When you have a small or mid-sized business that’s been around for a bit, hiring an outside marketing agency can help you save time and effort, as well as money.

While you may spend more money working with an agency instead of having employees run your marketing, you can end up saving money in the long term as business grows.

An agency lets you and your employees focus on your area of expertise rather than spending time focusing on marketing efforts. This frees up time for your company to be more productive, focused, and aggressive about what you do best.

Whether you need to focus on coming up with new or improved products and services, or work on other aspects of your business to ensure its success, having expert marketers take the pressure of that area allows you to better grow the business and be more successful in the long-run.

It’s important to keep in mind that you’re likely to get a higher ROI when you hire an agency to handle your marketing efforts. You’re putting your company’s marketing efforts into the hands of experts that can come up with impactful campaigns to promote your business. That means you’ll enjoy more earned profits that can then help offset the cost of hiring a marketing agency in the first place.

Other Factors to Consider

Your decision on working with an in-house marketing team or to hire an agency isn’t just about how long your company has been around or how large you are. You should also take a few other general factors into consideration, like cost, time, convenience, and overall value.

When it comes to cost, you might think you’re saving by having employees handle marketing, but this can cost you more if you end up having to hire more and more and more employees. In that light, hiring an agency to do all of your marketing can actually be the more cost-effective solution, especially in the long run. You don’t have to pay salaries and benefits or spend money on the hiring process for a bunch of employees.

Working with an agency can also help you in terms of time.

Bringing on employees to handle marketing means that you have to take the time to train and bring them up to speed appropriately.

When you hire an agency, there’s no training necessary. Agencies already know how to tackle marketing campaigns for other companies, they've done this over and over and over again, and can get right down to business, which saves your business time and energy.

As far as convenience goes, you might think it’s easier to work with an in-house team, especially when you need to make last-minute changes or take on urgent projects.

What you’re ignoring, though, is that marketing agencies are fully capable of handling these critical or short-term projects for you. When you stick with in-house marketing, your team can waste valuable time updating employees on these projects and making sure everyone understands what’s needed before starting any actual work on them.

So, which should your company choose? Here's the bottom line--when you need to choose between an in-house marketing team or a marketing agency, don’t make this decision lightly. Your company’s marketing efforts can make or break your business, so weigh all relevant factors carefully before deciding. This helps ensure that you have high-quality, highly effective marketing campaigns to draw more customers and boost your business.